^ On
a 22 May: 2001 Afghanistan's
ruling Taliban announces that it will require Hindus to wear identity labels
on their clothing to distinguish them from Muslims, purportedly to exempt
them from the religious police's enforcement of the Taliban's fanatically
medieval interpretation of Islam, which has led them to prohibit music,
education of women, statues (they destroyed archeological treasure Buddhas),
the trimming of beards, and to require women to be totally covered by a
burqa. There is indeed an active religious police, headed by Mohammed Wali,
busy enforcing the above and many other so-called Islamic rules that violate
human rights. The Taliban has also become an internationally pariah regime
for harboring Saudi exile terrorist boss billionaire Osama bin Laden.2001 In Tuscany, Lina Maiale, 73, decides to change her
name to Lina Meri. "Maiale" means pig in Italian. 2000
The US Supreme Court strikes down, 5-4, a federal law that shielded children
from sex-oriented cable TV channels. 2000 A committee
of the Arkansas Supreme Court recommends that US President Clinton be disbarred
for giving false testimony about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky in
the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. (Clinton later would agree to give
up his Arkansas law license for five years.)

1996 The General Accounting Office tells a US Senate
committee that Defense Department computers had sustained an estimated 250'000
attacks by hackers in 1995, and that the rate of attacks is doubling yearly.1995 Microsoft calls off an attempt to buy Intuit, maker
of the popular Quicken financial software. At the time, Microsoft Money
has 22% of the personal-finance software market, while Quicken has 70%.
The Justice Department had filed an antitrust suit in April to block the
acquisition, arguing that financial software was one of the few remaining
software sectors not dominated by Microsoft. 1995
A US district court judge dismisses a lawsuit alleging that a woman had
contracted brain cancer from using a cell phone. The judge said the case
lacked sufficient medical evidence about the health effects of cell phones.1993 Cult science-fiction director David Blaire uploads
the first digital film to the Internet: Wax: Or the Discovery of Television
Among the Bees.1991 Sonia Gandhi,
the Italian-born wife of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, was designated
to lead his Congress Party through national elections, one day after his
assassination. However, Mrs. Gandhi turned down the position.1990 After years of conflict, pro-Western
North Yemen and pro-Soviet South Yemen merged to form a single nation, the
Republic of Yemen.  Los líderes de Yemen del Norte, Alí Abdalla
Salej, y de Yemen del Sur, Jaida Abu Baker, proclaman en Adén el nacimiento
de la República del Yemen.1990 Dow Jones avg hits
a record 2852.231988 Karoly Grosz, partidario de
la perestroika, primer ministro de Hungría.1981
François Mitterrand forma un Gobierno de izquierda en Francia.1979 Canadians vote in parliamentary elections that put
the Progressive Conservatives in power, ending the 11-year tenure of Prime
Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.1977 Final European
scheduled run of the Orient Express (94 years)

^1977 Jimmy Carter
reaffirms his commitment to human rights
President Jimmy Carter, in a speech delivered at Notre Dame University,
reaffirms his commitment to human rights as a cornerstone of US foreign
policy and disparages the "inordinate fear of communism which once
led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear." Carter's
speech marked a new direction for US Cold War policy, one that led
to both accolades and controversy. Jimmy Carter was elected president
in 1976, during a time when America was still reeling from the trauma
of the Vietnam War and many were questioning the very basis of US
foreign diplomacy. Carter promised
change, and during an address at Notre Dame University on 22 May
1977, he sketched out his vision for the future of US diplomacy. He
began by noting the "great recent successes" in nations such as India,
Greece, and Spain in bringing about democratic governments. These
successes had renewed America's confidence in the strength of democracy
and would now "free" the United States from the "inordinate fear of
communism" that once led America to ally itself with brutal dictators
who agreed to help fight the communist menace. What was needed in
the "new world" that America faced was "a policy based on constant
decency in its values and on optimism in our historical vision." Carter
then outlined the steps he was taking to strengthen this "commitment
to human rights as a fundamental tenet of our foreign policy." The
US's foreign policy, he concluded, should be "rooted in our moral
values, which never change."
Carter's commitment to the protection and advancement of human rights
as the keystone to his foreign policy brought him applause from many
Americans and others around the world that believed that the United
States, in battling the Soviet Union, had resorted to reprehensible
actions. The Vietnam War had shattered the vision of America as a
protector of the weak and defender of freedom, and Carter's accent
on moral values struck a resonant chord with many disillusioned Americans.
The policy also resulted in some controversy, however. When long-time
dictators Anastacio Somoza of Nicaragua and the Shah of Iran fell
from power in 1979, critics of Carter's human rights policy blamed
the president for the demise of two governments, which had been strong
allies in the war against communism. Ronald Reagan, in his successful
1980 presidential campaign against Carter, constantly reiterated his
theme that his opponent's policies had severely weakened America in
its struggle against the Soviet Union.

1972 Ceylon becomes Republic of Sri Lanka as its constitution
is ratified

1972 US President
Nixon arrives in Moscow^top^
for a summit with Soviet leaders, becoming the first US president
to ever visit the USS.R. However,
although it was Nixon’s first visit to the Soviet Union as president,
he had visited Moscow once before  as US vice-president in 1959.
As President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vice-president, Nixon made frequent
official trips abroad, including a historic trip to Moscow to tour
the Soviet capital and to attend the US Trade and Cultural Fair in
Sokolniki Park. Soon after Vice President Nixon arrived on July 23,
1959, he opened an informal debate with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev
about the merits and disadvantages of their governments’ political
and economic systems. Known as the "Kitchen Debate" because of a particularly
heated exchange between Khrushchev and Nixon that occurred in the
kitchen of a model US home at the American fair, the dialogue was
a defining moment in the Cold War.
Nixon’s second visit to Moscow in May 1972, this time as president,
was for a far more conciliatory purpose. During a week of summit meetings
with Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev and other Soviet officials,
the US and the USS.R. reached a number of agreements, including one
that laid the groundwork for a joint space flight in 1975. On May
26, Nixon and Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty,
the most significant of the agreements reached during the summit.
The treaty limited the US and the USS.R. to two hundred antiballistic
missiles each, which were to be divided between two defensive systems.
President Nixon returned to the United States on May 30.

^1969 Conflicting
proposals at Vietnam peace talks.
Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, at the 18th plenary session of the Paris
peace talks, says he finds common ground for discussion in the proposals
of President Richard Nixon and the National Liberation Front. In reply,
Nguyen Thanh Le, spokesman for the North Vietnamese, said the programs
were "as different as day and night." At the 16th plenary session
of the Paris talks on May 8, the National Liberation Front had presented
a 10-point program for an "overall solution" to the war. This proposal
included an unconditional withdrawal of United States and Allied troops
from Vietnam; the establishment of a coalition government and the
holding of free elections; the demand that the South Vietnamese settle
their own affairs "without foreign interference"; and the eventual
reunification of North and South Vietnam.
In a speech to the US public on 14 May, President Nixon responded
to the Communist plan with a proposal of his own. He proposed a phased,
mutual withdrawal of major portions of US Allied and North Vietnamese
forces from South Vietnam over a 12-month period. The remaining non-South
Vietnamese forces would withdraw to enclaves and abide by a cease-fire
until withdrawals were completed. Nixon also insisted that North Vietnamese
forces withdraw from Cambodia and Laos at the same time and offered
internationally supervised elections for South Vietnam. Nixon's offer
of a "simultaneous start on withdrawal" represented a revision of
the last formal proposal offered by the Johnson administration in
October 1966. In the earlier proposal, known as the "Manila formula,"
the United States stated that the withdrawal of US forces would be
completed within six months after the North Vietnamese left South
Vietnam. In the end, Nguyen Thanh Le's observation was on target.
The communists' proposal and Nixon's counteroffer were very different
and there was, in fact, almost no common ground. Neither side relented
and nothing meaningful came from this diplomatic exchange.

1967 The General Assembly of the Southern Presbyterian
Church (PCUS) adopted the Confession of 1967. It was the first major declaration
of faith adopted by this branch of Protestantism since the Westminster Confession
of 1647. 1967 Egyptian president Nassar closes
Straits of Tiran to Israel

^1964 Rusk warns North
Vietnamese. In
a major speech before the American Law Institute in Washington DC,
Secretary of State Dean Rusk explicitly accuses North Vietnam of initiating
and directing the aggression in South Vietnam. US withdrawal, said
Rusk, "would mean not only grievous losses to the free world in Southeast
and Southern Asia but a drastic loss of confidence in the will and
capacity of the free world." He concluded: "There is a simple prescription
for peace  leave your neighbors alone."
In the fall, there was incontrovertible evidence that North Vietnamese
regular troops were moving down the Ho Chi Minh Trail to join the
Viet Cong in their war against the Saigon government and its forces.
Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Thailand mobilized its border provinces
against incursions by the communist Pathet Lao forces from Laos and
agreed to the use of bases by the US Air Force for reconnaissance,
search and rescue, and even attacks against the Pathet Lao. By the
end of the year, some 75 US aircraft would be based in Thailand to
assist in operations against the Pathet Lao. Eventually, Thailand
permitted the United States to use its air bases for operations against
the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese in South Vietnam, and ultimately
to launch bombing raids against North Vietnam. In addition, Thailand
sent combat troops to South Vietnam, numbering 11'000 at the height
of the Thai commitment.

1944 Rail bombing campaign starts^top^
US and British aircraft begin a systematic bombing raid on railroads
in Germany and other parts of northern Europe, called Operation Chattanooga
Choo-Choo. The operation is a success; Germany is forced to scramble
for laborers, including foreign slave laborers, to repair the widespread
damage exacted on its railway network.

1939 Berlin-Rome
Axis is forged in steel^top^
In the last few months before the outbreak
of World War II in Europe, Italian leader Benito Mussolini signed
the so-called "Pact of Steel" with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, uniting
Fascist Italy with Germany in a formal military and political alliance
and strengthening the "Berlin-Rome Axis." Mussolini coined the nickname
"Pact of Steel" (he had also come up with the metaphor of an "axis"
binding Rome and Berlin) after reconsidering his first choice, "Pact
of Blood." Both sides were fearful and distrustful of the other, and
only sketchily shared their prospective plans. The result was both
Italy and Germany, rather than acting in unison, would often "react"
to the precipitous military action of the other. Despite
recent Italian military victories in Ethiopia and Albania, many Italians,
including a faction of the Fascist party, resented Mussolini’s signature
of the agreement. In addition to hastening the outbreak of a war that
few in Italy wanted, many questioned how the sovereignty of Italy
figured in Hitler’s plans for German world domination.
After seizing power over Italy in 1925, Mussolini appealed to his
country’s former Western allies for new treaties, but his brutal 1935
invasion of Ethiopia ended all hope of alliance with the Western democracies.
In 1936, Mussolini joined Hitler in his support of Francisco Franco’s
Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, prompting the signing
of a treaty of cooperation in foreign policy between Italy and Germany
in 1937. In 1939, in the last
few months preceding the outbreak of World War II in Europe, the two
governments’ relationship was reinforced by the Pact of Steel. However,
as German armies stormed across Europe, Italy waited until it was
assured of Germany’s success before officially entering the war. In
March 1940, Hitler and Mussolini met, and on 10 June of the same year,
with France going down in defeat, Italy declared war against the Allied
powers. In September 1940, Japan, which had signed a cooperative pact
with Italy and Germany in late 1936, formally joined the Axis with
the signing of the Tripartite Pact in Berlin.

1856 Senator
assaults senator^top^
In the US Senate, on 19 May and
20 May 1856, Senator Charles Sumner, 45, of Massachusetts had
denounced the "Crime against Kansas" (the Kansas-Nebraska Act) as
"in every respect a swindle" and characterized its authors, Senators
Andrew P. Butler and Stephen A. Douglas, as myrmidons (followers)
of slavery. Two days later Congressman Preston S. Brooks of South
Carolina invaded the Senate, labelled the speech a libel on his state
and on his uncle, Senator Butler, and then severely beat Sumner with
a cane. It took three years for Sumner to recover from the beating.
Congress did not expel Brooks, and some legislators carried weapons
to future sessions. Southern Congressman
Preston Brooks savagely beats Northern Senator Charles Sumner in the
halls of Congress as tensions rise over the expansion of slavery.
When the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was passed, popular
sovereignty was applied within the two new territories and people
were given the right to decide the slave issue by vote. Because the
act nullified the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the debate over slavery
intensified. Northerners were incensed that slavery could again resurface
in an area where it had been banned for over 30 years. When violence
broke out in Kansas Territory, the issue became central in Congress.
On May 19, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, an ardent abolitionist,
began a two-day speech on the Senate floor in which he decried the
"crime against Kansas" and blasted three of his colleagues by name,
one of which—South Carolina Senator Andrew P. Butler—was elderly,
sick, and absent from the proceedings. Butler's cousin, Representative
Preston Brooks, who had a history of violence, took it upon himself
to defend the honor of his kin. Wielding the cane he used for injuries
he incurred in a duel over a political debate in 1840, Brooks entered
the Senate chamber and attacked Sumner at his desk, which was bolted
to the floor. Sumner's legs were pinned by the desk so he could not
escape the savage beating. It was not until other congressmen subdued
Brooks that Sumner finally escaped. Brooks became an instant hero
in the South, and supporters sent him many replacement canes. He was
vilified in the North and became a symbol of the stereotypically inflexible,
uncompromising representative of the slave power. The incident exemplified
the growing hostility between the two camps in the prewar years. Sumner
did not return to the Senate for three years while he recovered.

1843
The Great Emigration departs for Oregon^top^ A massive
wagon train, made up of a thousand settlers and a thousand head of cattle,
set off down the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri. Known as the
"Great Emigration," the expedition came two years after the first modest
party of settlers made the long, overland journey to Oregon.
After leaving Independence, the wagon train followed the Sante Fe Trail
for some forty miles and then turned northwest to the Platte River, which
they followed along its northern route to Fort Laramie, Wyoming. From there,
they traveled on to the Rocky Mountains, which they passed through by way
of the broad, level South Pass that led to the basin of the Colorado River.
The travelers then went southwest to Fort
Bridger, northwest across a divide to Fort Hall on the Snake River, and
on to Fort Boise, where they gained supplies for the difficult journey over
the Blue Mountains and into Oregon. The massive wagon train finally arrived
in October, completing the 3000-km journey from Independence in five months.
In the next year, four more wagon trains made the journey, and by 1845,
the number of emigrants exceeded three thousand. Travel along the Oregon
Trail gradually declined with the coming of the railroads, and the route
was finally abandoned in the 1870s.A
thousand pioneers head West on the Oregon Trail The first major
wagon train to the northwest departs from Elm Grove, Missouri, on the Oregon
Trail. Although US sovereignty over the Oregon Territory was not clearly
established until 1846, American fur trappers and missionary groups had
been living in the region for decades. Dozens of books and lectures proclaimed
Oregon's agricultural potential, tweaking the interest of American farmers.
The first overland immigrants to Oregon, intending primarily to farm, came
in 1841 when a small band of 70 pioneers left Independence, Missouri. They
followed a route blazed by fur traders, which took them west along the Platte
River through the Rocky Mountains via the easy South Pass in Wyoming and
then northwest to the Columbia River. In the years to come, pioneers came
to call the route the Oregon Trail.
In 1842, a slightly larger group of 100 pioneers made the 3000 km journey
to Oregon. The next year, however, the number of emigrants rose to 1000.
The sudden increase was a product of a severe depression in the Midwest
combined with a flood of propaganda from fur traders, missionaries, and
government officials extolling the virtues of the land. Farmers dissatisfied
with their prospects in Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee, hoped to
find better lives in the supposed paradise of Oregon. On this day in 1843,
some 1000 men, women, and children climbed aboard their wagons and steered
their horses west out of the small town of Elm Grove, Missouri. The train
comprised more than 100 wagons with a herd of 5000 oxen and cattle trailing
behind. Dr. Elijah White, a Presbyterian missionary who had made the trip
the year before, served as guide. The first section of the Oregon Trail
ran through the relatively flat country of the Great Plains. Obstacles were
few, though the river crossings could be dangerous for wagons. The danger
of Indian attacks was a small but genuine risk. To be on the safe side,
the pioneers drew their wagons into a circle at night to create a makeshift
stockade. If they feared Indians might raid their livestock-the Plains tribes
valued the horses, though generally ignored the oxen-they would drive the
animals into the enclosure. Although many neophyte pioneers believed Indians
were their greatest threat, they quickly learned that they were more likely
to be injured or killed by a host of more mundane causes. Obstacles included
accidental discharge of firearms, falling off mules or horses, drowning
in river crossings, and disease. After entering the mountains, the trail
also became much more difficult, with steep ascents and descents over rocky
terrain. The pioneers risked injury from overturned and runaway wagons.
Yet, as with the 1000-person party that made the journey in 1843, the vast
majority of pioneers on the trail survived to reach their destination in
the fertile, well-watered land of western Oregon. The migration of 1844
was smaller than that of the previous season, but in 1845 it jumped to nearly
3000. Thereafter, migration on the Oregon Trail was an annual event, although
the practice of traveling in giant convoys of wagons gave way to many smaller
bands of one or two-dozen wagons. The trail was heavily traveled until 1884,
when the Union Pacific constructed a railway along the route.

1824 Protectionist
victory for Henry Clay.. ^top^
During the early spring of 1824, lawyer-turned-legislator
Henry Clay vigorously stumped for the passage of a protectionist tariff.
Playing on national pride, Clay positioned the tariff as a potent
tool for bolstering America's fiscal and social well-being. With its
blend of protectionist measures and domestic trade initiatives, the
tariff was designed to break the nation's putatively heavy reliance
on foreign goods. But, Clay's campaign, which included a marathon
two-day speech before the House of Representatives, was met with some
fierce resistance, most notably from Daniel Webster, who hit the House
floor in early April to deliver his own two-day take on the tariff.
Webster passionately argued against the legislation, dismissing it
as an affront to free trade. However, when the dust, settled, Clay
was the victor: on this day in 1824, the House passed the Tariff of
1824.

2006:: 35 Taliban rebels and 34 innocent civilians in US
air raid, started shortly before midnight the previous day, on village Azizi
(aka Hajiyan), Kandahar province, Afghanistan, where the rebels were hiding
in a madrassa (where 9 civilians died) and fled into a home (where 25 civilians
died) during the raid. Some 15 civilians are wounded. — (060526)2004
Palestinian suicide bomber, 19, of the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine, in the afternoon, as he was challenged by Israeli soldiers
30 meters from the Bekaot roadblock in the northern Jordan Valley, West
Bank. One Israeli soldier and four Palestinian bystanders are injured.2004 Rawan Mohammed Abu Zeid, 3, Palestinian girl, shot
in the neck and head by Israeli snipers, as she left her home in the Brazil
neighborhood of Rafah, Gaza Strip, to go, with other children and no adults,
to a nearby store to buy candy. [Rawan during her funeral >]2004 A German, shot as he leaves a supermarket in Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia, at 18:15 (15:15 UT).2004 A woman in her home,
and four policemen of some 20 outside the neighboring home of Abdul-Jabbar
Youssef al-Sheikhli, in Baghdad, Iraq, by a car bomb. Al-Sheikhli, of the
Shiite Muslim Dawa party, who is slightly injured, is the deputy minister
in charge of security in the puppet government of Iraq.2002
Mahmoud Titi, Iyad Abu Hamdan, 22, and Imad Al-Khatib, 25, by rockets
fired from Israeli tanks, in the evening, near Nablus, West Bank. The Israelis
say that they targeted Titi because he was a regional commander in the Al
Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, responsible for the deaths of 11 Israelis, among
them five people killed in a shooting attack at the Seafood Market restaurant
in Tel Aviv in March 2002.

^1998
Ben Walker, 16, from injuries received the previous
day
in the shooting at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon, where
Mikael Nickkolauson, 17, was shot dead and more than 20 other people
were wounded by Kipland
P. Kinkel, 15, who had already killed his parents at home the
evening before.

1997 Alfred Day Hershey, científico estadounidense.1974 Irmgard
Flügge-Lotz, German US mathematician born on 16 July 1903.
She worked on numerical methods for solving differential equations especially
in fluid dynamics.1967 James
Langston Hughes, writer of novels, stories, poems, and plays
about the life of US Blacks. He was born on 01 February 1902. Author of
The Weary Blues (1925) — Shakespeare in Harlem —
The Dream Keeper — Not Without Laughter — The Ways of White
Folks — The Big Sea — Popo and Fifina.1933
José María Vargas Vila, escritor colombiano.1918
Carlos Octavio Bunge, polígrafo argentino.1910
Jules Renard, French educator and author born on 22 Feb 1864.1902 Lilly Martin Spencer, English US painter born in 1822.
MORE
ON SPENCER AT ART 4 MAY
with links to images.1895 Isaac Peral y Caballero,
marino e inventor español.

^1885
Victor Hugo, in Paris, France[Hugo's photograph by Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) >]
Victor Hugo was born in Besançon on
26 February 1802, the son of one of Napoléon's officers. While still
a teenager, Victor decided to become a writer. Although he studied law,
he also founded a literary review to which he and other emerging writers
published their work. In 1822, Hugo married his childhood sweetheart, Adèle
Foucher, and published his first volume of poetry, which won him a pension
from Louis XVIII.
In 1823, Hugo published his first novel, Han
d'Islande. About this time, he began meeting regularly with a group
of Romantics. His 1827 play, Cromwell, embraced the tenets of Romanticism,
which he laid out in the play's preface. The following year, despite a contract
to begin work on a novel called Notre Dame de Paris, he set to
work on two plays. The first, Marion de Lorme (1829), was censored
for its candid portrayal of a courtesan purified by love. The second, Hernani
ou L'honneur castillan, became the touchstone for a bitter and
protracted debate between French Classicists and Romantics.[< etching
by Rodin] On 15 January 1831,
Hugo finally completed Notre-Dame
de Paris, which pleaded for an aesthetic that would tolerate the
imperfect, the grotesque. The book also had a simpler agenda: to increase
appreciation of old Gothic structures, which had become the object of vandalism
and neglect In the 1830s, Hugo wrote
numerous plays, many of which were written as vehicles for the actress Juliette
Drouet, with whom Hugo was romantically connected starting in 1833. In 1841,
Hugo was elected to the prestigious Académie Française, but
two years later he lost his beloved daughter and her husband when they were
drowned in an accident. His expressed his profound grief in a poetry collection
called Les Contemplations
(1856). Hugo was forced to flee France when Napoléon III came to
power; he did not return for 20 years. While still in exile, he completed
Les Misérables
(1862), which became a hit in France and abroad. He returned to Paris during
the Franco-Prussian War and was hailed a national hero. Hugo's writing spanned
more than six decades, and he was given a national funeral and buried in
the Pantheon after his death. Victor Hugo
was also an artist who produced some 4000 drawings.  MORE
ON HUGO THE ARTIST AT ART 4 MAY
with links to images.
AUTHOR HUGO ONLINE:

^1873 Alessandro
Manzoni, in Milan, poet, playwright, novelist.
Alessandro Manzoni, uno dei più grandi scrittori
non solo del XIX secolo, ma della letteratura europea dal Medioevo
in poi Italian poet and novelist
whose novel I promessi sposi (The Betrothed, 1952) had immense patriotic
appeal for Italians of the nationalistic Risorgimento period and is
generally ranked among the masterpieces of world literature. Manzoni
was born in Milan on 7 March 1785pManzoni
wrote (1812-15) a series of religious poems, Inni
sacri (1815), on the church feasts of Christmas, Good Friday,
and Easter, and a hymn to Mary. The last, and perhaps the finest,
of the series, La pentecoste, was published in 1822.
During these years, Manzoni also produced
the treatise Osservazioni sulla morale cattolica(1819); an
ode on the Piedmontese revolution of 1821, Marzo 1821; and
two historical tragedies influenced by Shakespeare: Il
conte di Carmagnola (1820), a romantic work depicting a 15th-century
conflict between Venice and Milan; and Adelchi
(performed 1822), a richly poetic drama about Charlemagne's overthrow
of the Lombard kingdom and conquest of Italy. Another ode, written
on the death of Napoleon in 1821, Il cinque maggio (1822),
was considered by Goethe, one of the first to translate it into German,
as the greatest of many written to commemorate the event.Manzoni's
masterpiece, I promessi sposi, 3 vol. (1825-27), is a novel
set in early 17th-century Lombardy during the period of the Milanese
insurrection, the Thirty Years' War, and the plague. It is a sympathetic
portrayal of the struggle of two peasant lovers whose wish to marry
is thwarted by a vicious local tyrant and the cowardice of their parish
priest. A courageous friar takes up the lovers' cause and helps them
through many adventures to safety and marriage. Manzoni's resigned
tolerance of the evils of life and his concept of religion as the
ultimate comfort and inspiration of humanity give the novel its moral
dimension, while a pleasant vein of humor in the book contributes
to the reader's enjoyment. The novel brought Manzoni immediate fame
and praise from all quarters, in Italy and elsewhere. Prompted by
the patriotic urge to forge a language that would be accessible to
a wide readership rather than a narrow elite, Manzoni decided to write
his novel in an idiom as close as possible to contemporary educated
Florentine speech. The final edition of I promessi sposi
(1840-42), rendered in clear, expressive prose purged of all antiquated
rhetorical forms, reached exactly the sort of broad audience he had
aimed at, and its prose became the model for many subsequent Italian
writers.Biografia
e Rittrato di Manzoni
MANZONI ONLINE: I
Promessi Sposi  I
Promessi Sposi  I
Promessi Sposi  Storia
della colonna infame  Le
odi civili  Gli
inni sacri  Adelchi
 Il
Conte di Carmagnola  Del
romanzo storico  Lettera
a Cesare Taparelli D'Azeglio  Lettre
à Chauvet (in English translation): I
Promessi Sposi, or The Betrothed

1868 Julius
Plücker, German mathematician and, from 1847 to 1865,
physicist, born on 16 June 1801. He made important contributions to analytic
geometry and physics.1815 William
Spence, Scottish mathematician born in 1777.1813
Johann-Jakob Dorner I, German painter born on 18 July 1741. —
more with links to images.1802 Martha
Dandridge Custis Washington, 71. of a severe fever.

^
1455 The Duke of Somerset, and Thomas
de Clifford, and 300 nobles as the War of the Roses begins
In the opening battle of the England’s thirty-year
War of the Roses, the Yorkists defeat King Henry VI’s Lancastrian forces
at the Battle of St. Albans. Many Lancastrian nobles perish, including the
duke of Somerset and Thomas de Clifford, and the king is forced to submit
to the rule of Richard of York, the former protector of England.
In the 1450s, English failures in the Hundred Years War with France, coupled
with periodic fits of insanity suffered by King Henry VI, led to a power
struggle between the houses of York, whose badge was a red rose, and Lancaster,
later associated with a white rose. Richard, the leader of the Yorkist opposition,
was appointed protector in 1453, but in the next year the king regained
his sanity and York was excluded from the Royal Council.
In 1455, Richard raised an army of 3000 men, and in May, the Yorkists marched
to London. On 22 May, a smaller Lancastrian force met them at St. Albans,
thirty kilometers northwest of London, and three hundred nobles perished
before the Lancastrians fled the field. After the battle, Richard again
was made English protector. Five years later, he was killed, but his son
was crowned as King Edward IV in 1461.
The War of Roses left little mark on the common English people but severely
thinned the ranks of the English nobility. Among the royalty who perished
were Richard Neville, the earl of Warwick, and kings Henry VI and Richard
III. In 1486, King Henry VII’s marriage to Elizabeth, the daughter of Edward
IV, united the houses of Lancaster and York and effectively ended the bloody
War of the Roses. In the opening battle
of England's War of the Roses, the Yorkists defeat King Henry VI's Lancastrian
forces at St. Albans, 30 km northwest of London. Many Lancastrian nobles
perished, including Edmund Beaufort, the duke of Somerset, and the king
was forced to submit to the rule of his cousin, Richard of York. The dynastic
struggle between the House of York, whose badge was a red rose, and the
House of Lancaster, later associated with a white rose, would stretch on
for 30 years. Both families, closely related, claimed the throne through
descent from the sons of Edward III, the king of England from 1327 to 1377.
The first Lancastrian king was Henry IV in 1399, and rebellion and lawlessness
were rife during his reign. His son, Henry V, was more successful and won
major victories in the Hundred Years War against France. His son and successor,
Henry VI, had few kingly qualities and lost most of the French land his
father had conquered. At home, chaos prevailed and lords with private armies
challenged Henry VI's authority. At times, his ambitious queen, Margaret
of Anjou, effectively controlled the crown. In 1453, Henry lapsed into insanity,
and in 1454 Parliament appointed Richard, duke of York, as protector of
the realm. Henry and York's grandfathers were the fourth and third sons
of Edward III, respectively. When Henry recovered in late 1454, he dismissed
York and restored the authority of Margaret, who saw York as a threat to
the succession of their son, Prince Edward. York raised an army of 3000
men, and in May the Yorkists marched to London.
On 22 May 1455, York meets Henry's forces at St. Albans while on the northern
road to the capital. The bloody encounter lasts less than an hour, and the
Yorkists carried the day. The duke of Somerset, Margaret's great ally, was
killed, and Henry was captured by the Yorkists. After the battle, Richard
again was made English protector, but in 1456 Margaret regained the upper
hand. An uneasy peace was broken in 1459, and in 1460 the Lancastrians were
defeated, and York was granted the right to ascend to the throne upon Henry's
death. The Lancastrians then gathered forces in northern England and in
December 1460 surprised and killed York outside his castle near Wakefield.
York's son Edward reached London before Margaret and was proclaimed King
Edward IV. In March 1461, Edward won a decisive victory against the Lancastrians
at the Battle of Towton, the bloodiest of the war. Henry, Margaret, and
their son fled to Scotland, and the first phase of the war was over. Yorkist
rivalry would later lead to the overthrow of Edward in 1470 and the restoration
of Henry VI. The next year, Edward
returned from exile in the Netherlands, defeated Margaret's forces, killed
her son, and imprisoned Henry in the Tower of London, where he was murdered.
Edward IV then ruled uninterrupted until his death in 1483. His eldest son
was proclaimed Edward V, but Edward IV's brother, Richard III, seized the
crown and imprisoned Edward and his younger brother in the Tower of London,
where they disappeared, probably murdered. In 1485, Richard III was defeated
and killed by Lancastrians led by Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth
Field. Henry Tudor was proclaimed King Henry VII, the first Tudor king.
Henry was the grandson of Catherine of Valois, the widow of Henry V, and
Owen Tudor. In 1486, he married Edward IV's daughter Elizabeth of York,
thereby uniting the Yorkist and Lancastrian claims. This event is seen as
marking the end of the War of Roses; although some Yorkists supported in
1487 an unsuccessful rebellion against Henry, led by Lambert Simnel. The
War of Roses left little mark on the common English people but severely
thinned the ranks of the English nobility.

^
1990 Windows 3.0
Microsoft unveils Windows 3.0 at gala
events in twenty cities around the world, linked by satellite to a
theater in New York City. The show features a speech by Bill Gates,
as well as laser lights, videos, and surround sound. Microsoft spent
$10 million publicizing the new release in what was generally regarded
as the most expensive software introduction to date. Industry experts
praised the software as a major improvement over earlier versions
of Windows. Apple, alarmed by
the success of the new software, sued Microsoft for stealing its user-friendly
interface but ultimately lost the case. Meanwhile, IBM tried to reestablish
its dominance in the personal computer business by pushing its OS/2
operating system, which Microsoft had helped develop, but it never
had much success. Windows 3.0 captured consumers' loyalty and sold
three million copies in its first year.

^1942 Theodore
Kaczynski Jr., “the Unabomber”, in Chicago.
On 03 April 1996, at his small wilderness
cabin near Lincoln, Montana, Kaczynski
would be arrested by FBI agents and charged with being the “Unabomber”,
the elusive terrorist blamed for sixteen mail bombs that killed three
people and severely injured eleven others between 1978 and 1995.Kaczynski
won a scholarship to study mathematics at Harvard University at age
sixteen. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan,
he became a professor at the University of California at Berkeley
before abruptly resigning in 1969. Apparently disillusioned with the
world around him, he retreated to a family property in Montana, where
he developed a philosophy of radical environmentalism and militant
opposition to modern technology. 1978, he manufactured and sent his
first mail bomb to a professor at Northwestern University, and a public
safety officer was wounded while opening the suspicious package. 1979,
his third known terrorist bomb exploded on an American Airlines flight,
causing minor injuries from smoke inhalation. As Kaczynski usually
targeted universities and airlines, federal investigators began calling
their suspect the Unabomber, an acronym of sorts for university, airline,
and bomber. 1987, a woman saw a man wearing dark glasses and a hooded
sweatshirt placing what turned out to be the bomb next to a businessman's
car in Salt Lake City. The sketch of the man that emerged became the
only representation of the alleged Unabomber. 1993, various federal
departments established the UNABOM Task Force, which intensified the
search for a Unabomber suspect.
On 19 September, 1995, The Washington Post published
the so-called "Unabomber's
Manifesto," a sixty-five-page thesis on what Kaczynski perceived
to be the problems with America's industrial and technological society.
The newspaper, which split the cost with The New York Times,
was assured that by publishing the essay future bombings would be
avoided. Kaczynski's brother, David, read the essay and recognized
his brother's ideas and language, leading him to inform the FBI in
February of 1996 that he suspected his brother was the Unabomber.
On 03 April, Ted Kaczynski was arrested at his cabin in Montana,
and extensive evidence, including a live bomb, was uncovered at the
site. Indicted on over a dozen counts of terrorism, he appeared briefly
in court in June of 1998 to plead not guilty to all charges. Over
the next year and a half, Kaczynski wrangled with his defense attorneys,
who, against his wishes, wanted to issue an insanity plea that he
believed compromised his political motives and beliefs. In January
of 1998, at the scheduled start of the Unabomber trial, he expressed
his desire to acquire a new defense team. Two days later, Judge Garland
Burrell rejected Kaczynski's request and also approved his attorney's
plan to portray him as a paranoid schizophrenic. Kaczynski next asked
the judge to allow him to represent himself, but the request was likewise
denied, even after an official psychiatrist and both the prosecution
and defense deemed him fit to do so. On 22 January, 1998, Ted
Kaczynski pleaded guilty and was spared the death penalty. On 04 April
1998, the Unabomber was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences
without the possibility of parole. At
his small wilderness cabin near Lincoln, Montana, Theodore John Kaczynski
is arrested by FBI agents and accused of being the Unabomber, the
elusive terrorist blamed for 16 mail bombs that killed three people
and injured 23 during an 18-year period. Kaczynski, born in Chicago
in 1942, won a scholarship to study mathematics at Harvard University
at age 16. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan,
he became a professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
Although celebrated as a brilliant mathematician, he suffered from
persistent social and emotional problems, and in 1969 abruptly ended
his promising career at Berkeley. Disillusioned with the world around
him, he tried to buy land in the Canadian wilderness but in 1971 settled
for a 1.4-acre plot near his brother's home in Montana.
For the next 25 years, Kaczynski lived as a hermit, occasionally working
odd jobs and traveling but mostly living off his land. He developed
a philosophy of radical environmentalism and militant opposition to
modern technology, and tried to get academic essays on the subjects
published. It was the rejection of one of his papers by two Chicago-area
universities in 1978 that may have prompted him to manufacture and
deliver his first mail bomb. The package was addressed to the University
of Illinois from Northwestern University, but was returned to Northwestern,
where a security guard was seriously wounded while opening the suspicious
package. In 1979, Kaczynski struck again at Northwestern, injuring
a student at the Technological Institute. Later that year, his third
bomb exploded on an American Airlines flight, causing injuries from
smoke inhalation. In 1980, a bomb mailed to the home of Percy Wood,
the president of United Airlines, injured Wood when he tried to open
it. As Kaczynski seemed to be
targeting universities and airlines, federal investigators began calling
their suspect the Unabomber, an acronym of sorts for university, airline,
and bomber. From 1981 to 1985, there were seven more bombs, four at
universities, one at a professor's home, one at the Boeing Company
in Auburn, Wash., and one at a computer store in Sacramento. Six people
were injured, and in 1985 the owner of the computer store was killed
 the Unabomber's first murder. In 1987, a woman saw a man wearing
aviator glasses and a hooded sweatshirt placing what turned out to
be a bomb outside a computer store in Salt Lake City. The sketch of
the suspect that emerged became the first representation of the Unabomber,
and Kaczynski, fearing capture, halted his terrorist campaign for
six years. In June 1993, a lethal mail bomb severely injured a University
of California geneticist at his home, and two days later a computer
science professor at Yale was badly injured by a similar bomb.
Various federal departments established
the UNABOM Task Force, which launched an intensive search for a Unabomber
suspect. In 1994, a mail bomb killed an advertising executive at his
home in New Jersey. Kaczynski had mistakenly thought that the man
worked for a firm that repaired the Exxon Company's public relations
after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. In April 1995, a bomb killed
the president of a timber-industry lobbying group. It was the Unabomber's
last attack. Soon after, Kaczynski
sent a manifesto to The New York Times and The Washington
Post, saying he would stop the killing if it were published.
In 1995, The Washington Post published the so-called "Unabomber's
Manifesto," a 35'000-word thesis on what Kaczynski perceived to be
the problems with the US's industrial and technological society. Kaczynski's
brother, David, read the essay and recognized his brother's ideas
and language; he informed the FBI in February 1996 that he suspected
that his brother was the Unabomber.
On 03 April 1996, Ted Kaczynski is arrested at his cabin in Montana,
and extensive evidence  including a live bomb and an original
copy of the manifesto  are discovered at the site. Indicted
on more than a dozen federal charges, he appeared briefly in court
in 1996 to plead not guilty to all charges. During the next year and
a half, Kaczynski wrangled with his defense attorneys, who wanted
to issue an insanity plea against his wishes. Kaczynski wanted to
defend what he saw as legitimate political motives in carrying out
the attacks, but at the start of the Unabomber trial in January 1998
the judge rejected his requests to get a new defense team and to represent
himself. On 22 January 1998, Kaczynski pleaded guilty on all
counts and was spared the death penalty. He showed no remorse for
his crimes and in May 1998 was sentenced to four life sentences plus
30 years.

1936 Morgan Scott Peck, US psychiatrist who died of cancer
on 25 September 25. He was the author of self-help books: The Road Less
Traveled (1978), Further Along the Road Less Traveled (1993),
The Road Less Traveled and Beyond (1997). — (051003) 1925
Jean Tinguely, artista suizo.1922 Concha Alós Domingo,
escritora española.1912 Herbert Brovarnik Herbert Charles
Brown US chemist whose pioneering work with inorganic and
organic boron compounds won him (along with Georg Wittig) the 1979 Nobel
Prize for Chemistry.1903 Yves-André
Rocard, French mathematician who died on 16 March 1992.1900 Associated Press is founded.1881 (Julian
date) Mikhail Fyodorovich Larionov: go
to Art “4” June 03 Gregorian1880
Bessie Ellen Edna Davidson, British artist who died in 1965.1865 Alfred
Cardew Dixon, English mathematician who died on 04 May 1936.
He worked both on ordinary and partial differential equations studying abelian
integrals, automorphic functions and functional equations.

1859 Arthur
Conan Doyle, in Scotland, the creator of Sherlock
Holmes. ^top^
Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he met
Dr. Joseph Bell, a teacher with extraordinary deductive reasoning
power. Bell partly inspired Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes years
later. After medical school, Doyle moved to London, where his slow
medical practice left him ample free time to write.
His first Sherlock Holmes story, A
Study in Scarlet, was published in Beeton's Christmas Annual
in 1887. Starting in 1891, a series of Holmes stories appeared in
The Strand magazine. Holmes enabled Doyle to leave his medical practice
in 1891 and devote himself to writing, but the author soon grew weary
of his creation. In The Final
Problem, he killed off both Holmes and his nemesis, Dr. Moriarty,
only to resuscitate Holmes later due to popular demand.
In 1902, Doyle was knighted for his work with a field hospital in
South Africa. In addition to
dozens of Sherlock Holmes stories and several novels, Doyle wrote
history, pursued whaling, and engaged in many adventures and athletic
endeavors. After his son died in World War I, Doyle became a dedicated
spiritualist. He died in 1930.
DOYLE ONLINE:

^
1813 Richard Wagner,
German dramatic composer and theorist who died on 13 February 1883
in Venice. His operas and music had a revolutionary influence on the
course of Western music, either by extension of his discoveries or
reaction against them. Among his major works are Der fliegende
Holländer (02 Jan 1843), Tannhäuser (19 Oct 1845), Lohengrin
(28 Aug 1850), Tristan und Isolde (10 Jun 1865), Parsifal
(26 Jul 1882), and his great tetralogy, Der Ring des Nibelungen
(1869–1876). The artistic and
theatrical background of Wagner's early years (several elder sisters
became opera singers or actresses) was a main formative influence.
Impulsive and self-willed, he was a negligent scholar at the Kreuzschule,
Dresden, and the Nicholaischule, Leipzig. He frequented concerts,
however, taught himself the piano and composition, and read the plays
of Shakespeare, Goethe, and Schiller.
Wagner, attracted by the glamour of student life, enrolled at Leipzig
University, but as an adjunct with inferior privileges, since he had
not completed his preparatory schooling. Although he lived wildly,
he applied himself earnestly to composition. Because of his impatience
with all academic techniques, he spent a mere six months acquiring
a groundwork with Theodor Weinlig, cantor of the Thomasschule; but
his real schooling was a close personal study of the scores of the
masters, notably the quartets and symphonies of Beethoven. His own
Symphony in C Major was performed at the Leipzig Gewandhaus
concerts in 1833. On leaving the university that year, he spent the
summer as operatic coach at Würzburg, where he composed his first
opera, Die Feen, based on a fantastic tale by Carlo Gozzi.
He failed to get the opera produced at Leipzig and became conductor
to a provincial theatrical troupe from Magdeburg, having fallen in
love with one of the actresses of the troupe, Wilhelmine (Minna) Planer,
whom he married in 1836. The single performance of his second opera,
Das Liebesverbot, after Shakespeare's Measure for Measure,
was a disaster. In 1839, fleeing
from his creditors, he decided to put into operation his long-cherished
plan to win renown in Paris, but his three years in Paris were calamitous.
Despite a recommendation from the influential gallicized German composer
Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner could not break into the closed circle at
the Opéra. Living with a colony of poor German artists, he
staved off starvation by means of musical journalism and hackwork.
Nevertheless, in 1840 he completed Rienzi (after Bulwer-Lytton's
novel), and in 1841 he composed his first representative opera, Der
fliegende Holländer, based on the legend about a ship's
captain condemned to sail forever.
In 1842, aged 29, he gladly returned to Dresden, where Rienzi
was triumphantly performed on 20 October 1842. The next year Der
fliegende Holländer (produced at Dresden, 02 January 1843)
was less successful, since the audience expected a work in the French–Italian
tradition similar to Rienzi, and was puzzled by the innovative
way the new opera integrated the music with the dramatic content.
But Wagner was appointed conductor of the court opera, a post that
he held until 1849. On 19 October 1845, Tannhäuser (based,
like all his future works, on Germanic legends) was coolly received
but soon proved a steady attraction; after this, each new work achieved
public popularity despite persistent hostility from many critics.
The refusal of the court opera authorities
in Dresden to stage his next opera, Lohengrin, was not based
on artistic reasons; rather, they were alienated by Wagner's projected
administrative and artistic reforms. His proposals would have taken
control of the opera away from the court and created a national theatre
whose productions would be chosen by a union of dramatists and composers.
Preoccupied with ideas of social regeneration, he then became embroiled
in the German revolution of 1848–1849. Wagner wrote a number
of articles advocating revolution and took an active part in the Dresden
uprising of 1849. When the uprising failed, a warrant was issued for
his arrest and he fled from Germany, unable to attend the first performance
of Lohengrin at Weimar, given by his friend Franz Liszt on 28 August
1850. For the next 15 years Wagner
was not to present any further new works. Until 1858 he lived in Zürich,
composing, writing treatises, and conducting (he directed the London
Philharmonic concerts in 1855). Having already studied the Siegfried
legend and the Norse myths as a possible basis for an opera, and having
written an operatic “poem,” Siegfrieds Tod, in
which he conceived of Siegfried as the new type of man who would emerge
after the successful revolution he hoped for, he now wrote a number
of prose volumes on revolution, social and artistic. From 1849 to
1852 he produced his basic prose works: Die Kunst und die Revolution,
Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (The Art Work of the Future), Eine
Mitteilung an meine Freunde, and Oper und Drama. The
latter outlined a new, revolutionary type of musical stage work—the
vast work, in fact, on which he was engaged. By 1852 he had added
to the poem of Siegfrieds Tod three others to precede it, the whole
being called Der Ring des Nibelungen and providing the basis
for a tetralogy of musical dramas: Das Rheingold; Die Walküre;
Der junge Siegfried; and Siegfrieds Tod, later called
Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods).The Ring reveals Wagner's
mature style and method, to which he had found his way at last during
the period when his thought was devoted to social questions. Looking
forward to the imminent creation of a socialist state, he prophesied
the disappearance of opera as artificial entertainment for an elite
and the emergence of a new kind of musical stage work for the people,
expressing the self-realization of free humanity. This new work was
later to be called “music drama,” though Wagner never
used this term, preferring “drama.”
Wagner's new art form would be a poetic drama that should find full
expression as a musical drama when it was set to a continuous vocal-symphonic
texture. This texture would be woven from basic thematic ideas, which
Wagner called “motives,” but which have come to be known
by the term Leitmotiv (“leading motive”) invented by one
of his disciples. These would arise naturally as expressive vocal
phrases sung by characters and would be developed by the orchestra
as “reminiscences” to express the dramatic and psychological
development. This conception found
full embodiment in The Ring, except that the leading motives
did not always arise as vocal utterances but were often introduced
by the orchestra to portray characters, emotions, or events in the
drama. With his use of this method, Wagner rose immediately to his
amazing full stature: his style became unified and deepened immeasurably,
and he was able to fill his works from end to end with intensely characteristic
music. Except for moments in The Rheingold, his old weaknesses, formal
and stylistic, vanished altogether, and with them disappeared the
last vestiges of the old “opera.” By 1857 his style had
been enriched by the stimulus of Liszt's tone poems and their new
harmonic subtleties, and he had composed Das Rheingold, The Valkyrie,
and two acts of Siegfried. But he now suspended work on The
Ring: the impossibility of mounting this colossus within the foreseeable
future was enforcing a stalemate on his career and led him to project
a “normal” work capable of immediate production. Also,
his optimistic social philosophy had yielded to a metaphysical, world-renouncing
pessimism, nurtured by his discovery of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer.
The outcome was Tristan und Isolde (1857–1859), of
which the crystallizing agent was his hopeless love for Mathilde Wesendonk
(the wife of a rich patron), which led to separation from his wife,
Minna. Because of the Wesendonk
affair, life in Zürich had become too embarrassing, and Wagner
completed Tristan in Venice and Lucerne, Switzererland. The work revealed
a new subtlety in his use of leading motives, which in The Rheingold
and The Valkyrie he had used mainly to explain the action of the drama.
The impact of Schopenhauer's theory of the supremacy of music among
the arts led him to tilt the expressive balance of musical drama more
toward music: the leading motives ceased to remain neatly identifiable
with their dramatic sources but worked with greater psychological
complexity, in the manner of free association. In
1859 Wagner went to Paris, where, the following year, productions
of a revised version of Tannhäuser were fiascoes. But
in 1861 an amnesty allowed him to return to Germany; from there he
went to Vienna, where he heard Lohengrin for the first time. He remained
in Vienna for about a year, then traveled widely as a conductor and
awaited a projected production of Tristan. When this work was not
produced because the artists were bewildered by its revolutionary
stylistic innovations, Wagner began a second “normal”
work, the comedy-opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg,
for which he incorporated into his new conception of music drama certain
of the old “operatic”elements. By 1864, however, his expenditure
on a grand scale and inveterate habits of borrowing and living on
others had brought him to financial disaster: he had to flee from
Vienna to avoid imprisonment for debt. He arrived in Stuttgart without
a penny, a man of 51 without a future, almost at the end of his tether.
Something like a miracle saved him.
He had always made loyal friends, owing to his fascinating personality,
his manifest genius, and his artistic integrity, and now a new friend
of the highest influence came to his rescue. On 10 March 1864, “Der
Verrückte König” Ludwig II [25 Aug 1845 – 13 Jun 1886],
a youth of 18, ascended the throne of Bavaria; he was a fanatical
admirer of Wagner's art and, having read the poem of The Ring
(published the year before with a plea for financial support), invited
Wagner to complete the work in Munich.
The King set him up in a villa, and during the next six years there
were successful Munich productions of all of Wagner's representative
works to date, including the first performances of Tristan
(1865), The Meistersinger (1868), The Rheingold
(1869), and The Valkyrie (1870), the first two directed by
the great Wagner conductor Hans von Bülow. Initially a new theater
at Munich was projected for this purpose, with a music school attached,
but this came to nothing because of the opposition aroused by Wagner's
way of living. Not only did he constantly run into debt, despite his
princely salary, but he also attempted to interfere in the government
of the kingdom; in addition, he became the lover of von Bülow's
wife, Cosima, the daughter of Liszt. She bore him three children,
Isolde, Eva, and Siegfried, before her divorce in 1870 and her marriage
to Wagner in the same year. For all these reasons, Wagner thought
it advisable to leave Munich as early as 1865, but he never forfeited
the friendship of the King, who set him up at Triebschen on the Lake
of Lucerne. In 1869 Wagner had
resumed work on The Ring which he now brought to its world-renouncing
conclusion. It had been agreed with the King that the tetralogy should
be first performed in its entirety at Munich, but Wagner broke the
agreement, convinced that a new type of theatre must be built for
the purpose. Having discovered a suitable site at the Bavarian town
of Bayreuth, he toured Germany, conducting concerts to raise funds
and encouraging the formation of societies to support the plan, and
in 1872 the foundation stone was laid. In 1874 Wagner moved into a
house at Bayreuth that he called Wahnfried (“Peace from Illusion”).
The whole vast project was eventually realized, in spite of enormous
artistic, administrative, and financial difficulties. The King, who
had provided Wahnfried for Wagner, contributed a substantial sum,
and mortgages were raised that were later paid off by royalties. The
Ring received its triumphant first complete performance in the
new Festspielhaus at Bayreuth on 13, 14, 16, and 17 August 1876.
Wagner spent the rest of his life at
Wahnfried, making a visit to London in 1877 to give a successful series
of concerts and then making several to Italy. During these years he
composed his last work, the sacred festival drama Parsifal, begun
in 1877 and produced at Bayreuth in 1882; he also dictated to his
wife his autobiography, Mein Leben, begun in 1865. He died
of heart failure, at the height of his fame, and was buried in the
grounds of Wahnfried in the tomb he had himself prepared. Since then,
except for interruptions caused by World Wars I and II, the Festspielhaus
has staged yearly festivals of Wagner's works. Wagner's
single-handed creation of his own type of musical drama was a fantastic
accomplishment, considering the scale and scope of his art. His method
was to condense the confused mass of material at his disposal, the
innumerable conflicting versions of the legend chosen as a basis,
into a taut dramatic scheme. In this scheme, as in his model, the
Oresteia of Aeschylus, the stage events are few but crucial,
the main part of the action being devoted to the working out of the
characters' motivations. In setting
the poem he used his mastery of construction on the largest scale,
which he had learned from studying Beethoven, to keep the broad outlines
clear while he consistently developed the leading motives to mirror
every shifting nuance of the psychological situation. Criticism of
these motives as arbitrary, factual labels shows a misunderstanding
of Wagner. He called them “carriers of the feeling,” and,
owing to their essentially emotional character, their pliability,
and Wagner's resource in alternating, transforming, and combining
them, they function as subtle expressions of the changing feelings
behind the dramatic symbols. The
result of these methods was a new art form, of which the distinguishing
feature was a profound and complex symbolism working on three indivisible
planes, dramatic, verbal, and musical. The vital significance of this
symbolism has been increasingly realized. The common theme of all
his mature works, except The Meistersinger, is the romantic
concept of “redemption through love”; but this element,
used rather naively in the three early operas, became, in the later
musical dramas, a mere catalyst for much deeper complexes of ideas.
In
The Ring there are at least five interwoven strands of overt
meaning concerned with German nationalism, international Socialism,
the philosophy of Schopenhauer, Buddhism, and Christianity. On another
level, there is a prophetic treatment of some of the themes of psychoanalysis:
power complex arising from sexual inhibition; incest; mother fixation;
and Oedipus complex.[for full portrait, 1276x1128pix, 120kb;
click on image >>>]Tristan stands in a line of symbolism extending from the
themes of “night” and “death” explored by
such German Romantic poets as Novalis [1772–1801], through the
Schopenhauerian indictment of life as an evil illusion and the renunciation
of the will to live, to the modern psychological discovery of a close
connection between erotic desire and the death wish. The Meistersinger
stands apart as a work in which certain familiar themes are treated
on a purely conscious plane with mellow wisdom and humor: the impulsiveness
of youth and the resignation of age, the ecstasy of youthful love,
the value of music itself as an art. In Wagner's last work, Parsifal,
the symbolism returns on a deeper level than before. He has been much
criticized for this strongly personal treatment of a religious subject,
which mingles the concepts of sacred and profane love; but in the
light of later explorations in the field of psychology his insight
into the relationship between religious and sexual experience seems
merely in advance of its time. The themes of innocence and purity,
sexual indulgence and suffering, remorse and sexual renunciation are
treated in Parsifal with a subtle intensity and depth of
compassion that probe deeply into the unconscious and make the opera
in some ways the most visionary of all Wagner's works.
Wagner's influence, as a musical dramatist and as a composer, was
a powerful one. Although few operatic composers have been able to
follow him in providing their own librettos, all have profited from
his reform in the matter of giving dramatic depth, continuity, and
cohesion to their works. In the
purely musical field, Wagner's influence was even more far-reaching.
He developed such a wide expressive range that he was able to make
each of his works inhabit a unique emotional world of its own, and,
in doing so, he raised the melodic and harmonic style of German music
to what many regard as its highest emotional and sensuous intensity.
Much of the subsequent history of music stems from him, either by
extension of his discoveries or reaction against them. Thomas
Mann [06 Jun 1875 – 12 Aug 1955] may have modeled on Wagner
the main character of his novel Der
Tod in Venedig (1912), Gustav von Aschenbach. Wagner
advocated the "final solution" to the "Jewish problem" (Endlösung
der Judenfrage: the extermination of Jews) long before those policies
were put
into practice by Adolf Hitler [20 Apr 1889 – 30 Apr 1945]
and his Nazi regime. That made Wagner a favorite composer of Hitler..

1808 Gérard de Nerval, French writer. NERVAL ONLINE: Oeuvres1733 Hubert Marius Robert, French Rococo
era painter who died on 15 April 1808, called Robert des Ruines
because of his paintings of ruined
Roman monuments based on his Italian
drawings. He was one of the first curators
of the Louvre. MORE
ON ROBERT AT ART 4 MAY with
links to images.1700 Michel-François Dandré-Bardon,
French painter and teacher who died on 04 July 1783. — links
to images.1671 La ciudad de Versailles, su carta
de fundación es otorgada por Louis XIV de Francia.1650 Richard
Brakenburg, Dutch artist who died on 28 December 1702.

Thoughts for the day:
Talent is like money; you don't have to have some to talk about it.
 Jules Renard [22 Feb 1864 – 22
May 1910]. {but you have to have the talent to talk about what you don't have}
Kindness is like cancer; you don't have to have it to talk about it.
[etc. etc. etc.]
Talent is like cancer; you don't have to have it to think you have it.
“Do not let fear confine your life inside a shell of doubt. A turtle never
moves until his head is sticking out. — Charles
Ghigna [25 Aug 1946~] One disadvantage of having nothing to do: You can't
stop and rest.
One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
 Walter Bagehot, English editor and economist [03 Feb 1826 –
24 Mar 1877].